Nick Raynsford hits back in the latest round of his war of words with Andrew Stunell on the issue of social housing

Nick Raynsford

I have no wish to extend the frankly rather tedious exchange of correspondence with Sir Andrew Stunell about housing (“A maths lesson for Labour”, page 26, 11 April 2014). However, I cannot let him get away with the absurd claim that the coalition government has achieved a net increase of 160,000 social homes.

The most authoritative source of housing statistics, the UK Housing Review, published this week, shows that affordable housing starts fell from 53,917 in 2009/10 to just 36,206 in 2012/13, while the social rented housing programme collapsed from 39,492 to just 4,774 over the same period.

Sir Andrew’s grasp of facts appears very weak.

Nick Raynsford MP

Topics